Journal

Nibbles

Two nibbles worth noting. In the first instance, the random cat that has been visiting our garden and attempting to ingratiate itself into our lives in recent days, purring and rubbing and being generally friendly, has gone rogue. It’s nipped Kirsty through her jeans as she was walking by, attempted to take a chunk out of my wrist, drawing blood with its disease-ridden fangs, and hissed viciously at Eva. Needless to say, it’s no longer welcome. I suspect the pan of water I threw over it earlier this evening may have communicated this effectively.

The other nibble, out of the blue, is a request from a publisher to see the full manuscript of one of the two novel manuscripts I currently have under submission (they’re not with the same publisher). That’s not yet something to celebrate in and of itself, as far as the road to publication goes. As any lover of… erm… angling metaphors knows, a nibble is a long way from an actual bite. What does please me is that the synopsis I sent with the first couple of chapters as part of the initial submission clearly isn’t as rubbish as I thought it was. I’ve always been bad at writing those, compressing months of writing into a couple of effective pages, but maybe I’m getting a little better at them. Good news. Essential, really, if I want my writing to be continue to be considered seriously at publishing houses.

Oh, and the house is on the market, as of this evening, thank god. Not entirely happy with the surveyor’s home report (in the UK, the seller pays for a single survey, which all viewers then get access to). Our garden was marshy, and the path was slippy, and both are mentioned in the report. I grant that this was the case when the surveyor came. Mostly because it had been raining for seven days straight. Most of Glasgow was, to be frank, a bit marshy and slippy that day.